


Confiteor

by Domenika Marzione (domarzione)



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Gen, POV Booker | Sebastien le Livre, Post-Movie, booker & nile
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-24
Updated: 2020-08-24
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:01:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26075311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/domarzione/pseuds/Domenika%20Marzione
Summary: Booker is nothing if not honest about what he has done.
Comments: 45
Kudos: 219





	Confiteor

"Andy said I could email you questions about logistics and stuff we'll need that you know and nobody else does," Nile explains. "I'm gonna take liberties with that because there's a whole lotta stuff I don't know and I'm not sure they do, either."

Sébastien- and he's still Sébastien in his head and that's perhaps part of the problem - comes to look forward to Nile's emails. She's so _young_ and so full of life and so confused and so naïve and so eager and he wonders if the others looked at him in 1812 and saw the same. A child in a family that had given up on having children, the Isaac to Sarah and a couple of Abrahams, a new life to shape and guide… and be willing to sacrifice to a greater purpose. 

(You are the one who offered up your beloved family as sacrifices, Sébastien.)

Nile's questions are initially about technical details - the family files he kept on their safehouses and land and which arms dealers they'd used and which clients they'd accepted and the bank accounts they used. She's terrifyingly clever with it all despite her seemingly earnest assertions that she's not very good with any of this; she picks up his notes on the dark web and runs with them with little guidance from him besides passwords and names. It astonishes him because it was such hard work when he'd studied it all, this modern-day occult that isn't strange at all to Nile, a modern-day child. 

"I'm a digital native," is her excuse. "People were emailing before I was born. It's not impressive that I know this shit. It's embarrassing that I don't know more." 

But in between the questions about VPNs and griping about a cipher based on languages that died before Gutenberg put together his first press, Nile sneaks in questions about him, about the others, about what they are. Andy's not telling her shit, that he knows because Andy can't anymore. It's not a choice she has made, or at least not a choice she's made in anyone's lifetime, it's just who she is now. She survives by forgetting, which was something she'd tried to give him as a gift and he could not accept and his failure is why they are here now. But while he knows Andy plans to end her life with a flourish and a purpose, that doesn't mean she can unlearn habits thousands of years old. Andy's not answering Nile's questions because she no longer can. Joe and Nicky… Joe and Nicky will do their best because they are good men and their attention will be outward now even with the gravity that draws them to each other. 

(He might prod Nile to ask the others about gravity. About the sun and the moon and the stars and the way the story of the world has changed a thousand times since they were born. She'll laugh as he did about what they used to accept as fact, but it is a true treat to hear Nicky and Joe speak of their wonderment. Science is still magic to them and they speak of it so beautifully. Andy, on the other hand, treats it all as one betrayal after another.) 

It takes Nile months to get around to the question she'd had from the start. "Why?" is the sum total of an email and he doesn't need to ask for clarification. He knows what she's asking even if he hasn't quite figured out the answer. 

She's already told him he's clinically depressed, which means more to her than to him because he _met_ Freud and Jung and most of their circle and they were all full of shit and preoccupied by fucking. Fucking doesn't actually solve anything and he knows that for a fact. He and Andy both have lists of discarded lovers longer than they could remember if they'd ever tried in the first place. An orgasm feels good in the moment, feels _great_ , but it does not fill the void where their hearts used to be. If Nicky and Joe hadn't been who they were, maybe it might have felt like more, maybe it might have been enough, but it's hard to be content with carnal satiation when you live with true love. So while he's aware that there've been "advances" since those Germanic assholes came on the scene, he's not interested enough to read the articles Nile sends him even if he thanks her for them. 

The answer to Nile's question… he owes her the answer because he knows she'll be the conduit to the others and they are owed the answer. The answer is that he never, never, _never_ intended anyone to suffer, certainly not like how Joe and Nicky suffered. He will live through this exile so that he can tell them that and be believed. He never wanted them to hurt for his freedom and they won't accept that now, but in a century perhaps they will. He will tell them that Copley approached him not with seduction or those kinds of arts, but instead with an offer Copley didn't even understand the significance of. Copley wants to end human suffering, as if that were possible and not the essential element of humanity itself. But while Copley dreamed of a world without death, he dreamed of a world where he could finally _die_ and that's why he went along. He saw Copley's bullshit for what it was; he was never taken in, at least in that sense. But when Copley promised him that all that he needed was video of their resurrections, that's where he fell. 

In hindsight, he should have known it would never be that easy. That research needed experimentation - he wasn't so old as to forget that, but in his mad desire… perhaps he did. Perhaps he willed himself to believe that a mission 'gone wrong' would be enough, that his family would accept the inconvenience and the temporary pain and move on from it no wiser and with no lingering anger except for Copley, who would have handed his video on to the scientists whom he'd promised would solve the mystery of their immortality. Copley might have died in the payback - he'd known Andy would want revenge - but that had been acceptable to him. He would have killed anyone who presented a real threat to his family and that was Copley. But he'd been outmatched by Copley, who in turn pleaded innocence as if that were possible. He makes sure that Nile understands that, especially if they are going to work with Copley in the future. Copley had known what he was doing all along and there is no shame in turning that on him, but they should not be fooled as he was. They should take him for all he's worth and leave him a dried-out husk. He's angry at Copley for using him, but mostly for showing him who he really is, how far he's fallen, and he hates Copley for that. Ignorance isn't bliss, but it hurts a whole lot less. 

"I deserve this," he tells Nile more than once. "I broke bonds that should have been inviolate and if they are angry and scared, then I cannot tell them not to be and you should not, either. They have two hundred years of reasons and they are all real. Don't be mad at them for being hurt." 

Which is true and he believes it down to his soul, if it's still intact. But he believes in his own hurt, too, because it is a permanent shadow in his world. He can't wake or dream or move without it hanging over him, blotting out the sun. He would give anything to trade places with Andy, who would chop him into pieces with her ax if he said as much to her and he'd let her because pain would feel like something. He doesn't care if there are new names for his old agony, that there are pills that would make it less acute or make him care less about it. He knows it's there and it will always be there until he's like Andy, bleeding from a wound that will not heal. 

Nile is too young to understand, too new to this world to even conceive of how being unable to die is a burden and not a gift. She thinks she understands because she misses her family, but they are still here, still young. She will feel a different pain when she is reading of her brother's grandchildren's passing in obituaries. He wants to spare her of this, but he doesn't think it would be a kindness. He will hopefully be with his family again when it's time to catch her as she falls. 

Quynh turning up feels like justice. Like vengeance. It's not, but he's been waiting for someone to lash out at him in a way that feels real and this is close enough to count. 

**Author's Note:**

> [This has been posted to Tumblr if you'd like to like or reblog there](https://laporcupina.tumblr.com/post/627290901159526400/confiteor)


End file.
